By Elwely Elwelly and Phil Stewart
DUBAI/WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) – U.S. forces on Monday conducted strikes in southern Iran against targets including boats attempting to lay mines and missile launch sites, in what it described as defensive actions.
The strikes came as Iran’s top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said on Monday, after Washington and Tehran played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New Delhi earlier that the U.S. would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before considering whether to deal with Iran in “another way”.
There was a “pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait (of Hormuz), get the strait open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off,” Rubio said.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said talks with Iran were going “nicely”, but warned of fresh attacks if they failed. It “will only be a Great Deal for all, or no Deal at all,” he wrote.
Hours later, U.S. Central Command said in a statement it had carried out fresh strikes designed “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”
“U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” said Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson.
Also Monday, Iran said it had downed a “hostile” stealth drone using a new air defence system, Iranian news agencies reported, without saying where it had come from.
“This is a sign from us that no more stealth drones can penetrate the skies of the Persian Gulf,” Fars quoted unnamed officials as saying.
In another indication of the region’s tensions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday Israel would intensify strikes against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Israel’s military soon thereafter said it was attacking Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley and other areas.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire in mid-April, but Israel has continued airstrikes it says are acts of self-defence against Hezbollah, which was not party to the truce.
The official briefed on the Iranians’ Doha visit told Reuters the discussions focused on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, while Iran’s central bank governor attended to discuss the potential release of frozen Iranian funds as part of a final deal.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier that nuclear issues would only be negotiated after the framework accord was agreed.
Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. Tehran has consistently denied it has plans to do that.
TRUMP PUSHES ABRAHAM ACCORDS
In his Truth Social post, Trump also called on more Arab and Muslim states to sign up to the Abraham Accords, brokered during his first term in office and aimed at normalising ties between those states and Israel. He said Saudi Arabia and Qatar should immediately sign and Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey should follow suit, calling his request mandatory.
Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
A Pakistani source familiar with the matter said that the statement reflected an attempt to use the Iran diplomacy for a wider push around the accords – but that the two issues were “not interlinked and cannot be made so.”
Others saw the suggestion as aimed at making an Iran deal more palatable to sceptics.
“Trump is trying to sell an Iran deal as an Abraham Accords sequel: good for Israel, good for the region, tough enough for Washington,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.
“But he is trading one fantasy for another — from forcing Iran to surrender to pretending a fragile deal can anchor a new Middle East order.”
IRAN DEAL STICKING POINTS
Baghaei said the potential Iran deal contained no specific details on management of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually flows.
Iran will not charge tolls for ships to pass through but there will be a cost for services offered such as navigation and steps to protect the environment, he said, under a protocol to be agreed with Oman, which lies on the opposite shore of the waterway.
Citing a Middle East diplomatic source, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported the U.S. and Iran were discussing a plan to open the strait about 30 days after reaching a deal to end hostilities.
Iran would then clear mines from the strait during a 30-day window, after which ships from all countries could navigate freely and safely, Nikkei reported.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, only a few dozen vessels have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz compared with 125 to 140 daily previously.
Iran’s state TV said on Monday that 32 vessels and five oil tankers passed through the strait in the past 24 hours with the authorisation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces.
The standoff has caused a spike in oil prices and driven up the costs of fuel, fertiliser and food. On Monday, oil prices fell more than 4% to two-week lows amid optimism that a deal might come soon.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Additional reporting by Akanksha Khushi, Doina Chiacu, Ariba Shahid, Hatem Mater, Andrew Mills, Elwely Elwelly, Michael Martina and Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Stephen Coates, Sharon Singleton, Hugh Lawson and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Nick Zieminski and Stephen Coates)
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